Opportunities… to grab or not to grab?

So, this morning I had a long, drawn out and rather painful debate with a client of mine, a young girl, who is struggling to get a job in a country whose language she does not speak very well, and in which the work permit requirements are draconian. Honestly, I am pretty sure she will not succeed, but if she works well with me, considers her options, and stretches herself a bit, she will develop a great deal in the attempt, and find a good alternative.

However, she does not see things this way. She has cancelled our last two sessions at the last minute, which, contractually, means they are not replaced. She claims to be too busy to make time, as she has “a lot of study obligations”. I am not unsympathetic to this clash of priorities, but I do know that, however hard she studies, the window of opportunity for her work permit to be authorised is closing a little more each day!

It set me thinking about how we deal with opportunities. So many of us don’t deal with them at all unless they are delivered on a silver tray, with a full set of instructions and a magical extra two hours in the day! Why not? Should we not be grabbing these gifts with every ounce of energy that we possess? I believe yes, we should, but it involves risk, pain and change, and not everybody is ready to go there.

If you do see an opportunity on your horizon, and if you cannot see the silver tray and the extra two hours.. will you take it? What will you make of it? Will you work at understanding it? Ask questions of yourself, others and carry out research until you can use it? Will you use your wits to create something further from it? Will you knock at every door you can imagine until the right one opens? Or indeed any door at all opens? Will you look curiously inside and explore?

If the answer is not “yes, I will, with every bone in my body!” to at least some of the foregoing questions, I suspect that success will not be in your future this year. Success does not happen by chance. Some people are not luckier than others. My mom once told my sister that she thought that I was lucky and the two of “them” were not. I was outraged, as was my sister! I work so hard that most people cannot even imagine, and that is why fortune has smiled on me in so many ways. And my sister does the same. I think we have both had our share of bad “luck”, but it is all about how you respond.. Do you pick yourself up, brush yourself down, learn from the experience and start again? Or do you sit in your mess, cry and pity yourself?

If you need help in creating your own “luck”, then I am here. I am not a magician, but I have helped many to turn ordinary stuff into gold!